[plt-dev] renaming programs in the distribution

At Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:45:27 -0400, Carl Eastlund wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 11:35 AM, Matthew Flatt <mflatt at cs.utah.edu> wrote:
> > Similar to the way that `rico docs' serves the role of `plt-help', we
> > could have `rico games' replace `plt-games'.
> >
> > For GUI launchers for docs and games under Windows and Mac OS X, I
> > suggest `Rico Docs' and `Rico Games'. It's ok to have spaces in GUI-app
> > names, and then the documentation can refer to `rico docs' and `rico
> > games' commands (i.e., they work whether someone tries to use them via
> > a command line or by clicking on a GUI app).
> 
> I thought "rico" was just our administrative script name.

Yes, it depends on what `rico' is for.


My own views on some naming issues have evolved:

 * I was originally in favor of "PLT Racket" as the system name, but
   I've come around to the view that it should be "Racket" to
   streamline our marketing.

 * I originally thought that we needed a tool to unify just `mzc',
   `setup-plt', and `planet', but I eventually came to think of the
   unification as for command-line tools more generally.

These impressions make me think that command-line tools that are
currently invoked through `plt-' names should turn into `rico'
commands. I don't think that "Rico Web Server" is the name of the
websever, but it makes sense to me that the Racket Web Server is
started from the command-line using the general Racket command-line
tool, hence `rico web-server'.

Why not `rico scribble' and `rico slideshow' instead of `scribble' and
`slideshow'? Indeed, now that I've thought about it more, I think that
Scribble and Slideshow should be `rico' tools, too. Typing `rico scrib'
is not much harder than typing `scribble', and ditto for `rico slide'
versus `slideshow'.


Granted, using `rico' for the command-line tool instead of the name
`racket' is a little awkward, but that's yet another set of issues to
balance. The name `racket' seems long to me as a prefix, compared to
`rico', but it's not much longer. And maybe the executable currently
called `racket' (and we really have to have that standalone executable
for starting scripts, etc.) should be `racketrun' or something after
all, even though that doesn't fit with the `java' and `perl' and
`python and `ruby' precedents.


Or maybe the the problem is trying to put all command-line tools as
commands within something like `rico'. Maybe `rico' really should be
for *programming* tools... but what do we produce other than
programming tools? Which tools belong in `rico', and what name do you
use for the others when just dropping "PLT" would be too generic?